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3 hours ago
1
Posted: 2025-05-24
5 minute read
As I experiment a lot with open source solutions, I am always in need of a bit of compute power to run stuff on. Nowadays, with containers and automation through CI/CD, that has become a lot simpler compared to, say, 5-10 years ago. You just need a few simple, but powerful enough machines, a bit of networking and you can play around. So. Let me explain my current homelab setup.
Requirements and selected hardware, software
I wanted to have a simple, unobtrusive setup that can live in my living room, so I can watch the blinkenlights. This means that it also has to be quiet, even under load. Another requirement was easy access (to swap out stuff) and not too big an investment. With that in mind I decided to go for a cute 10 inch rack and some refurbished Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny PCs from the M9xx series.
These little boxes pack quite some oomph for my homelab use case. Quad core, up to 32 or 64GB of RAM, depending on the model. And they are cheap. A bare bone, refurbished M9xx can be had from €80. With a bit more stuff added (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), we are still talking around €120.
And thanks to the free Red Hat Developer Subscription for Individuals, you can install RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) on them, use Ansible and all the other good stuff un op to 16 machines.
So running an OpenShift cluster at home, Kubernetes or just pack a bunch of containers with home automation stuff on these little machines is totally in reach for a surprisingly low investment. Granted, for “AI” purposes you need a lot more power, but I don’t do AI at home :) I compare my setup to a typical Raspberry Pi setup. And compared to that you get a lot more (compute power) for a lot less (money and time invested).
A bit more details on the two PCs
At the bottom of my homelab is a ThinkCentre M900 Tiny (10FLS4W900) with 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500T CPU @ 2.50GHz, 1x 8GB DDR4-2133, 256GB SAMSUNG MZ7TY256HDHP-000L7 which will soon be updated with more RAM and a NVME m2 SSD.
Above that one is a ThinkCentre M910x Tiny (10MYS03U00) with 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 1x 16GB DDR4-2133, 1TB KINGSTON SNV2S1000G NVME m2 SSD.
Both machines have Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 9 (Plow) installed. Both have podman and container tools installed and both have the forgejo-runner up and running as systemd service. So I can run containers on them, use them as build machines for my (Forgejo powered) CI/CD pipelines or other purposes. Fun!
The Rack
Nothing special, but super cute. There’s quite a market out there for 10 inch racks, up to 12U high. I opted for a small 6U unit from Digitus, 3d printed some mounts for the ThinkCentres and network switch, put it all together and:
If you want to build something similar for your homelab, here’s the BOM (Bill of Materials) with links to product pages/specs and prices I paid here in Germany. I hope it helps you to maybe build somnething cute too!
Rack
| 1x DIGITUS 254 mm (10”) 6U wall mounting cabinet | €60,00 | DN-10-05U-1 |
| 1x DIGITUS 254 mm (10”) 1U shelf | €11,00 | DN-10 TRAY-1 |
| 2x DIGITUS Modular Patch Panel, 12-port | €11,00/pc | DN-91420 |
| 5x 3D printed Keystone covers | €0,05/pc | 3D Model |
| 2x 3D printed mount for ThinkCentre Tiny M9xx | €2,00 | 3D Model |
| 1x 3D printed brackets for Network Switch | €1,00 | 3D Model |
| TOTAL (ca.) | €96,00 |
Devices
| 1x VIMIN 10-Port Gigabit PoE Switch with 8 Port PoE | €50,00 | VM-0820GP |
| 1x Thinkpad ThinkCentre M910x Tiny (used, eBay) | €100 | Type M910 Tiny 10MY |
| 1x Thinkpad ThinkCentre M900 Tiny (used, eBay) | €80 | Type M900 Tiny 10FL |
| TOTAL (ca.) | €230,00 |
Cables & accessories
| 4x UGREEN USB-A to USB 3.0 Kabel Super Speed | €5,00/pc | UGREEN 10369 |
| 2x AISENS DISPLAYPORT to HDMI Converter Cable, DP/M-HDMI/M, Black, 0.5M | €10,00/pc | AISENS A125-0550 |
| 12x kwmobile Keystone Module for CAT 6A Cable - 10 Gbit/s Shielded Metal | €2,00/pc | kwmobile 52348.01.06_m001985 |
| 10x deleyCON 0.25m CAT6 Patch Cable | €1,20/pc | MK2246 |
| 4x AAOTOKK USB 3.0 A Keystone Adapter Female to Female USB 3.0 A | €2,11/pc | 682559179910 |
| 2x AAOTOKK HDMI Keystone Module Female to Female | €2,15/pc | 682559179811 |
| TOTAL (ca.) | €90,00 |
Other parts I already had
| 1TB NVME m2 SSD |
| 256GB SATA SSD |
| 2x 16GB SoDIMM |
| 2x 50cm network patch cable |
| Screws and blocks for rack mount |
